I could feel Rose slipping away from me. It was the same feeling I had when I was a kid. When I was Jean. Susan pulled away from me too, and I knew the same thing was happening with Rose. It began after she killed Neil, looking back. She wasn’t a murderer. She didn’t put the bad things she had done in a box in the deep basement of her mind, not to be looked over, dwelt on, again. Not like I did. It was a gift. It helped me move on. But Rose couldn’t do that. Rose needed to believe she was a good person, that she was kind, that she’d go to Heaven one day. I loved that about her. That innocence. It was refreshing after what I’d come from. But sometimes it could also be unbelievably annoying. She expected too much from people. Nobody was all good or all bad but Rose was very black and white. And I could tell, after she found out who I really was, she began to re-examine her feelings for me. She got past it because she had killed too – but she could console herself that she’d done it out of loyalty and love. Out of protection and self-defence. Mine had been out of anger, and fear, and that deep-rooted sense of abandonment.

I don’t know what I thought I was trying to achieve by flirting with Sean. I never fancied him for a second, but I wanted to make Rose jealous, I suppose, to make her realize she loved me. She needed me. And then, at the fireworks display, I noticed the way she looked at me. It was cold, detached. As though she’d had enough of me. I was so hurt by it that I couldn’t stand to be near her. So I walked away, got lost in the crowd. When she noticed I was gone she didn’t even seem that concerned. She just took Lolly’s hand and moved through the crowds towards home.

I walked around the village for a bit, trying to gather my thoughts, hoping that Rose would miss me, would realize that we were right for each other. I hoped by the time I’d got back she’d be so scared about Victor she’d agree we needed to leave together. A new life away from there.

When I eventually returned, Rose was pacing the little kitchen, her face white. She had a knife in her hand. She looked like a beautiful but unpredictable horse that was about to rear or bolt.

‘There you are!’ she hissed, as soon as I walked in. ‘How could you just leave me like that? You know I was scared with Victor on the prowl.’

‘Rose,’ I said, gently, walking over to her, my hand out to calm her.

‘I saw him!’ she cried. ‘He was in the garden.’ She waved the knife around.